News

Rock Scaling Operations May Cause Delays on I-70 Mountain Corridor

April 9, 2014 - Central Eastern Colorado/CDOT Region 1 - DENVER/MOUNTAIN CORRIDOR – Crews have successfully moved both westbound and eastbound traffic onto the detours that will be in place for the duration of construction of the Westbound Twin Tunnels project, through December 2014.

Now that traffic is traveling on the detour routes, crews have begun rock scaling efforts. This work began Monday and will continue throughout the remainder of the week and into next week. Rock scaling will begin at 7 a.m. and will continue until 6 p.m.

During this time, traffic will be stopped in both directions for a period of 30 minutes while crews perform the rock scaling. This is necessary to ensure the safety of the traveling public as rocks could fall across traffic lanes. Once the thirty minutes has passed, crews will open the lanes up for approximately 45 minutes in order to clear the traffic queue. This will continue throughout the day. Although traffic is stopped for only 30 minutes at a time, motorists should anticipate longer delays and plan their trips accordingly.

Throughout this time, blasting may also occur. Blasting will be coordinated with the rock scaling schedule and traffic will be stopped in both directions for this process.

The Westbound I-70 Twin Tunnels project is part of a package of improvements designed to ease congestion on the I-70 mountain corridor. This $55 million project will widen the westbound tunnel bore in Idaho Springs to accommodate a future third westbound lane, but will not add a third highway lane at this time. With resources still in place from the 2013 project that widened the eastbound tunnel, it is estimated that doing this work now will save $5 million to $7 million. The new tunnel is scheduled to open to traffic by the end of this year and project completion is scheduled for the summer of 2015 when restoration work is finished on County Road 314. For more information, call 303-327-4034 or visit www.coloradodot.info/projects/i70twintunnels. For current road and weather conditions you can also text CDOT to 25827 or download the CDOT mobile application to your smartphone.